Key of G avoids “worst songs” list for the first time in 7 years
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Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Over the weekend, popular, renowned music critic Todd in the Shadows released his video of the top ten best hit songs of last year. His picks for 2018 include a Travis Scott song (“Sicko Mode”), a Cardi B song (“I Like It”), and more. When it comes to the satisfaction and delight of finding out Todd agrees with you, 2018 was a fantastic year to be an Ariana Grande fan, with two of her recent songs making the top three this year. “Thank U Next” took #3, while “Breathin” took #1. And in both entries, Todd explains that Ariana grande had an extremely difficult life last year, marked by two high-profile breakups and death of beloved friend Mac Miller. “Thank U Next” gets much of its praise from being one of the most personal and relatable songs. If you are like a lot of music listeners, you don’t care all that much about musicians’ personal lives, but after listening to this song, we are sure you’ll feel some sympathy for Ariana Grande. This song is all about her personal life; the September 2018 death of Mac Miller is referenced in the line, “Wish I could say thank you to Malcolm, cause he was an angel.” She mentions other ex-boyfriends as well, such as Ricky Alvarez. That couple first got involved in April 2014, had their first public kiss in 2015, and broke up in July 2016. “Wrote some songs about Ricky,” Ariana sings in the song, “Now I listen and laugh.” Although Ariana has gone through lots of breakups, she has chosen a more positive view, seeing them not as setbacks but as learning experiences; she sings: “I’ve loved and I’ve lost, but that’s not what I see.” She reflects on her exes, who have taught her the value of patience.
The song “Breathin” saved Todd’s sanity last year as it is a reminder to keep breathing.
This year-end season marks the first time in seven years that no song in the key of G made it onto Todd’s “worst songs” list. Maroon 5’s song “Girls Like You” took the negative title of being the worst hit song of 2018. In an unprecedented move, the “worst songs” list was released in December instead of January. It was released on December 23, 2018, two days before Christmas. This is Todd’s first “worst songs” list since January 2012 to not include a “key of G” song as an entry or a dishonorable mention. It is worth mentioning that 2011 was the last year for which Todd did not do honorable and dishonorable mentions; in every year-end list since the 2012 year-end lists, Todd has used the following system: Count down from ten to two, list some honorable / dishonorable mentions, then reveal the number one song.
Of the twenty-two (22) songs that appeared on Todd’s year-end lists since 2011, eight songs made the “best songs” list (36.4%) while 14 (63.6%) made the “worst songs” list. Speaking of “22,” a Taylor Swift song by that name made the dishonorable mentions for 2013. “Feel This Moment,” whose music video came out two days after that of “22,” made the list proper, as Todd hates Christina Aguilera, and Todd took issue with the sampling of “Take On Me.” Both songs are in the key of G. In 2015, Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” was Todd’s second least favorite song of the year, behind only “Marvin Gaye” by Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor. The latter is in the key of E, not G, but “Fight Song” is in the key of G. For a song that is about being strong, Todd hears “astonishing weakness” in this song. This song pisses him off; he finds the concept of the song to be incredibly generic.
It is worth noting that a sample of 22 songs is still a pretty small sample, a small enough sample that 8/22 and 14/22 are not statistically significantly different from 11/22, or half and half. Using the binomial formula, there are 319,770 ways to choose 8 items from a list of 22 items, and the probability of getting 8 heads, 14 tails with a fair coin is 319,770 / 4,194,304 = 7.62%, which is above the 5% threshold commonly used in statistical research. The 5% threshold is just a convention; contrary to popular belief, 0.0499 is not much different from 0.0501, just like 17 years, 364 days old is not much different, biologically speaking, from 18 years and one day old, even though, legally speaking, the former is a minor while the latter is an adult.
This year, while no “key of G” song was on the “worst songs” list, one such song did make the “honorable mentions” section of his “best songs” list. That was The Weeknd’s “Pray For Me.” But let’s be real; much like Adele, The Weeknd is one of those artists we can always count on to make a song that is rated and regarded highly by audience and critics alike. On Album of the Year, a music rating/review website, most or all songs by The Weeknd, such as “Can’t Feel My Face”, “The Hills”, and “Starboy,” have user scores well above 80% and sometimes even 85%. Adele’s “Someone Like You” from 2011 also scores in the high 80s. For almost all listeners, it is a modern-day classic due to its complexity as a song about a sad breakup in which the man whom Adele was planning to marry has a different wife; Adele exercised acceptance by singing to him: “Never mind, I’ll find someone like you / I wish nothing but the best for you, too / Don’t forget me, I’ll beg, I’ll remember you said: Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead.”
Based on the above paragraph, it should come as no surprise that Todd likes The Weeknd and that this isn’t the first time The Weeknd has earned a place on Todd’s “best songs” list. “Can’t Feel My Face” was on the 2015 list, while “Starboy” was on the 2016 list. The Weeknd is nicknamed “Aerial Ace” for two reasons. First, in the Pokémon games, “Aerial Ace” is a Flying-type move that ignores accuracy and evasion so that it hits without fail, unless the target is in the semi-invulnerable stage of “Fly”, “Dive”, or similar moves, immune to the move, or under the effects of “Protect,” “Detect,” or other protection moves. Second, to “ace” means to do well. Taylor Swift, on the other hand, is akin to “Focus Blast,” which hits hard and has a chance of lowering the target’s Special Defense, if it hits. That’s a medium-sized “if”, seeing as the move has 70% accuracy, so it hits only seven times out of ten, and 30% of the time, it misses and does nothing. Or “High Jump Kick,” which has a 90% chance to hit, but if it misses, the user takes damage instead. Sometimes, you get wonderful, out-of-this-world masterpieces such as “Style” and “Wildest Dreams,” but other times, you get mediocre songs like “Bad Blood” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”
The worst year so far for “key of G” songs, by far, was 2014, in which a grand total of FIVE SONGS in that key appeared on the list. Three of them were on the list (“Animals” at #10, “Shake It Off” at #9, and “Show Me” at #6) while “Not A Bad Thing” and “Take Me To Church” were dishonorable mentions. Altogether, of the 17 songs that appeared as entries or dishonorable mentions that year, five songs (29.4%) were in the key of G.
We are 15 days into 2019, and we are confident that 2019 has some wonderful music in store for us!
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